Résumé

In Tibet sounds can heal, make ill, protect, challenge, appease, defile, purify, seduce or even liberate from worldly attachments. Sounds of the natural environment merge with human-made music and chanting in soundscapes that are intimately interconnected. While the spiritual features and healing powers of Buddhist ritual music have been often described, what is perhaps less known is the kaleidoscope of natural and human sounds against which it has been developed and performed for centuries. In this portfolio we explore some of these sacred soundscapes, their history and impacts.

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1In Tibet sounds are everywhere and act on living beings in multiple ways: they can heal, make ill, protect, bring prosperity, challenge, appease, defile, purify, seduce or even liberate from worldly attachments. Sounds of the natural environment – the flowing water, the whistling wind, the roaring avalanche – merge with the human-made music and chanting in soundscapes that are intimately interconnected. While the spiritual features and healing powers of Buddhist ritual music have been often explored and described, what is perhaps less known is the kaleidoscope of natural and human sounds against which it has been developed and performed for centuries. In this visual portfolio we are exploring some of the facets of Tibetan sacred soundscapes. Like sacred landscapes, these are a space for negotiation between pre- or non-Buddhist local spirits and Buddhist traditions. Attention to sound and its efficacy is revealed in many Tibetan ritual settings.

2For example, it is worth recalling the fact that the true title of the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead1 is in fact Liberation through Hearingbetween Death and Rebirth (Bar do thos grol), and is traditionally read in the framework of funerary rituals. Its recitation to dying and dead human beings is considered to be a powerful way to assist them in facing death, securing a better reincarnation by controlling the dangerous emotions that are encountered in the process (often represented as demons). Associated with this key ritual text, there is in fact a huge iconography of all the peaceful and wrathful deities that are evoked in the course of its recitation. However, it is not only the evocative content of the text that is efficacious but also the sheer perception of the chanting sound and the attendant ritual music that is often associated with it. These can reach the consciousness in ways that are more immediate than the decoded narrative.

3The yogin Milarepa is one of the most popular figures of Tibetan literary and oral tradition → Fig. 1. Milarepa is a hero on the “Buddhicisation” of the Tibetan landscape, through his taming of local deities. His biography and songs are classics of Tibetan literature, known across the Tibetan world and beyond. He is often depicted in a seated position, singing and with his hand cupped behind his ear. This gesture is understood in multiple ways: as a way to focus the perception of sound for singing; as an indication of his ability to capture the inner spiritual sound; and, especially in popular interpretations, as his ability to perceive divine melodies from the world surrounding him to inspire his songs of spiritual liberation. Milarepa’s ability to communicate with the environment and to speak with animals, as well as his search for simplicity and spiritual realization, has sometimes elicited a comparison with St Francis of Assisi. As in the case of St Francis’s Laudes Creaturarum (Praise of the Creatures), which involved a musical score composed by Francis himself, song is perceived as an extremely powerful expressive form that can reach the spirit in a very intimate way, through both poetic language and sound. In this image, Milarepa is represented according to Tibetan traditional iconography, as described by Jeff Watt.2 Milarepa is surrounded by various figures.

4When Buddhist masters arrived in Tibet, the landscape was already inhabited by a wide range of spiritual beings. According to an eleventh-century chronicle (dBa’ bzhed),3 when he was challenged by the Buddhist master Padmasambhava the mountain god Nyanchen Thanglha responded with storm and thunder. Converted to Buddhism, he has remained an active presence in the Tibetan landscape and still communicates with human beings through chanting oracles. Before being initiated, an oracle experiences a divine illness in which sounds and images of deities disturb his/her wellbeing. After the diagnosis of divine illness and the relevant initiation, the divine presences can be harnessed for the collective good, especially healing.

5The powerful Chang Targo is the brother of Nyanchen Thanglha and the male consort of the lake Dangra Yumtsho. He is the mountain god protector of the north and of the Bonpo religion and is evoked by the beat of an oracle’s drum. At first the oracle in an awakened state consults the guide-spirit through mirror-divination; then, by beating the drum and chanting, the oracle goes into trance and acts as the mouthpiece. Through the medium the god is thus consulted by the surrounding people, with the help of a translator. Both the sound of the instruments and the voice of the oracle become expressions of the god.

6Tibetan poetry often refers to thunder as the “summer drum” – understood to be a pleasing sound, and also a harbinger of much-needed rain. Certain rituals make devious use of this analogy to trap and destroy demons → Fig. 2. In a ritual for the subjugation of vampires, the lama lures the young female demon into a trap. She is sleeping on her own deep beneath the earth, alone in the darkness, and as the lama intones the litany he entices her to come to him with descriptions of fine food and company, as well as musical drumming and chanting. His blandishments penetrate her sleep, and she dreams about the wonderful things she will find when she goes to the world of humans: “She dreamed that the great dragon in the sky rumbled as thunder, and she dreamed of lightning flashing, and of divine dancing and singing.” She wakes up in a joyous mood and makes her way up towards the human realm. On the way she meets her mother, and tells her all the wonderful things she has dreamed about. But her mother is grim. “My daughter, what you tell me is not at all pleasing to hear! That thundering of the great dragon sky was the divine drum of the Bon priest; the lightning that flashed was the priest invoking the gods; the delightful singing and dancing was the enticement of your deceiver.”4 But by now it is too late; lured by the musical drumming and chanting of the priest, the vampire is trapped and destroyed.

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7The idea that water and wind originate music is widespread across the Himalya and the Tibetan Plateau. In a remote Himalayan valley a story links sounds to waterfalls and wind. There once lived a man named Palzang from the village of Drakmar, not far from the Tibetan border in the Nepalese district of Mustang. He had a wife and two young children. Like almost everyone else in his village, Palzang and his family were farmers, harvesting barley in the summer and buckwheat in the autumn, and producing butter and cheese from their goats. The village of Drakmar is one of the most beautiful places in all of Mustang. The name means “red crags”, after the awe-inspiring iron-laden cliffs that rise above the bright green oasis of the settlement.

8This was in the middle of the twentieth century, when epidemics were not uncommon, and diseases such as smallpox were still rife. Palzang’s two children fell ill and died, and his wife followed them soon afterwards. In his grief, he could not bear the prospect of continuing life as a solitary householder, and gave everything away to become a wanderer. He would sit for hours near waterfalls and listened to their soothing white noise. But as he sat, he noticed that when the wind blew, the sound of the water would change. He came to understand that all the songs in the world were in water, and that only the wind could draw them out. He eventually came to remember these songs, and set words to them. Since he was blessed with a fine voice he would wander from village to village, singing his strange and melancholy songs, and people were happy to reward this gentle man with tsampa, butter and a little dried meat – all he needed to sustain him. The only man who could match his voice and his repertoire was Duli, from the village of Te. On one occasion they were both in the royal city of Monthang to attend a festival. The occasion ended, as Tibetan festivals usually do, with songs, but very quickly the gathering became a contest between Palzang and Duli. They were actually good friends, and exchanged songs through the night and into the morning while the city listened to them, entranced. Palzang died in the 1970s, but that occasion in Monthang is still remembered, and his songs are still sung. The melodies are like no others, and when someone in a village sings a snatch of one his songs, one can immediately hear in the sad cadences the sound of the wind moving in the water.

9Sound acts on the living and on the dead: playing the shang, a flat bell typically used by lamas of the Bon religion, an aya priest can call for life, fortune and prosperity but can also assist in the process of transition from life to death and in the intermediate space (the bardo). Funerary rituals have often been an area of competition and negotiation between representatives of different traditions.

5 Per Kvaerne, Tibet Bon Religion: A Death Ritual of the Tibetan Bonpos, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 1985.

10The anthropomorphic male god represented on this ritual card is Shang Thri Lonam Dragchen, the embodiment of the deity of the Shang bell. He is recognized as a member of the divine group the “Thirteen Primeval Shen”, whose role, according to Per Kvaerne, is “to save living beings from the realm of bar do, i.e. the intermediate state between death and rebirth”5. The verses on the back of the image state → Fig. 3–4:

This is the empowerment implement of the Shang named Thri Lonam Dragchen. After I, the master who expounds scriptures has given this (empowerment) to you, the disciple who requests for the tradition of the Word, may there be the spiritual power (siddhi) of the symbol of the empowerment. As formerly Ye Shen Yundrung Sempa Shang Thri Lonam Dragchen correctly reached the ninth level of heaven, may you, like him, climb the grade from where one does not return! Ye Shen 13.

11On a high pass, a lama reading a ritual text and a chanting lhaven (lha bon) priest are invoking the local spirits → Fig. 5. The lama reads a ritual text of the Nyinmapa Buddhist tradition in which names of the most important local deities have been inserted. The lhaven recites according to his oral tradition and mentions the same gods as well as many more. He utters the name of every sacred rock, cliff, spring, crag … Sharing the same ritual space, they embody different traditions that have adjusted to each other over time. In both cases, uttering the name of a place is equivalent to making the relevant spiritual entity present so that human beings can relate to it. According to an eleventh-century chronicle, the Testament of Ba (dBa’ bzhed), it is by performing a comparable ritual that the Buddhist master Padmasambhava called the local spirits which were hostile to Buddhism and made them present so that they could be taught the Buddha’s doctrine of karmic cause and effect by the more scholarly Santaraksita. Both in the contemporary ritual context and in the historical one, the sound of the human voice pronouncing names is a powerful agent, and acts on the relationship between humans and the spiritual beings inhabiting the environment.

12In Buddhist ritual, text is understood in multiple ways, including as a sort of sound relic. This idea is best illustrated by the notion of sungten (literally, “support of speech”), indicating that books are repositories of the speech of the Buddha and of all the masters who carried on his legacy and are therefore revered as sacred objects. Scriptures can be activated through reading and recitation so that the uttering of words is endowed with the power of promoting wellbeing, protecting from negative forces and even healing. This is most evident in mantras (→ Fig. 6), in which the power of sound is elicited by the recitation of syllables so as to affect the reciter, the listeners and environment surrounding them. Tibetan landscapes metaphorically resonate with the omnipresence of mantras, carved on rocks, printed on prayer flags, set in motion through the turning of prayer-wheels in a universal recitation of actual or imagined sound. The power of the sound of words is also illustrated by the common household ritual in which monks are periodically invited to read scriptures. On these occasions the folios are shared among the monks, who read them simultaneously. As each monk is reading a different portion of the text, the meaning of the words is generally not intelligible. However, the sound of the recitation is ritually efficacious and it does indeed create a very powerful atmosphere in a setting that involves all the senses: the use of images and ritual tools, the burning of incense, the ingesting of blessed foods and the touch of items that are ritually charged, e.g. the touch of a holy book or image on the head of a devout participant.

13Tantric rituals often require the use of ritual instruments made of human bones. For example, in cho (gCod) rituals human bone instruments are used to summon evil spirits; the practitioner confronts them as well as the most frightening and polluting forces. According to an ethnomusicological study of cho rituals, multiple instruments are used for “Tone painting”, “a technique of composition whereby culturally relevant musical gestures are combined – in melody, instrumentation, and rhythm – to conjure up an image in the mind of the listener. To put this in another way, a composer evokes an image musically through culturally understood semiotic gestures. Often naturalistic imagery is depicted, such as the elements and forces of nature.”6 Through the offering/surrender of oneself, the attachment to the “self” is “cut”, literally cho (gcod), and liberation is achieved. This ritual is often performed on charnel grounds.

14The Tibetan female mystic Machig Labdron who lived in the twelfth century is considered the founder of this practice → Fig. 7. She is white in colour, with one face and two hands, she appears as a wisdom dakini. Peaceful with three eyes, a tiara of gold and jewels, gold earrings, bone ornaments, red hair ribbons and a green silk scarf, she holds upraised in the right hand a damaru (drum) resounding with the activities of Dharma. In the left hand upturned at the hip is a vajra-handled bell ringing with the silence of emptiness. Supported by the left leg with the right raised up she stands in a dancing posture above a moon disc and multi-coloured lotus blossom surrounded by a nimbus and areola of green light. At the top centre is the feminine personification of wisdom, orange Prajnaparamita. Below that sits Shakyamuni buddha, gold in colour, with one face and two hands performing the mudras of “earth witness” and meditation. At the left is a red hat lama of the Karma Kagyu (Kamtsangpa) School. Wearing the robes of a monk he holds the right hand in the mudra of blessing and the left in the mudra of generosity. At the right a lama wearing the attire of a monk and a pandita hat performs with the two hands at the heart in the mudra of Dharma Teaching while holding the stem of a pink lotus blossoming at the left shoulder and supporting a golden vase. At the middle left is the Indian teacher Padampa Sanggye (11th century), the founder of the Shije, “Pacifying” tradition, and the root guru to Machig Labdron. Dark brown in colour he has the appearance of a mahasiddha wearing bone ornaments, a skull crown and a red meditation belt. Held aloft in the right hand is a damaru and in the left a shinbone horn. Wishing jewels and offerings are laid out in front. At the right is the tutelary deity Vajravarahi, red, with one face and two hands holding a curved knife and skullcup with a katvanga staff against the left shoulder. Dancing on a sun disc and corpse she is surrounded by orange flames. Offerings are arranged in front. Directly below the central figure is Troma Nagmo – wrathful form of Vajravarahi, black, swinging a human skin in the right hand and holding a shinbone horn in the left.7

15Brahmarupa Mahakala (the Great Black One in the Form of a Brahmin) has “the outer form of Chaturmukha Mahakala, the special protector of the Guhyasamaja Tantra and the second main protector of the Sakya School → Fig. 8. Here he is depicted playing a human thighbone trumpet (kangling).”8

16Sound is represented in Tibetan ritual texts through a particular form of notation read from left to right. The texts representing chanting and/or the music of ritual instruments are called yangyig (dbyangs yig). Sound is efficacious in multiple ways, and these vary according to the ritual context: it can evoke, appease, fend off, protect and, at a higher spiritual level, promote concentration and liberation. This particular text is a yangyig for protective deities from Mongolia, where Tibetan Buddhism is widely practised. In the text one can see the musical lines paired up with the syllables that are being recited → Fig. 9. Working as a mnemonic tool in relation to an oral tradition with no reference to fixed tonal scales (and with great variation across traditions), Tibetan musical scores consist of notations that represent vocal and instrumental arrangements. In combination with visualizations, and hand gestures, music guides ritual performances.9

17The Tibetan term yang indicating sacred sound and melody is also used in the name of the goddess of music and learning: Yangchen (dbyangs can), literally, “the being endowed with melody”. In the History of Shekar or Shel dkar chos ’byung, a local history,10 she is defined as the “master of speech”, or Ngagi Wangchuk (ngag gi dbang phyug) → Fig. 10. This is the Tibetan Buddhist version of the popular Indian goddess Sarasvati, daughter and embodiment of the energy of Brahma. She is usually represented dressed in white, seated on a lotus flower and playing a string instrument (vina). In Vedic sources Sarasvati is both a goddess whose name is associated with purification and water, and a sacred river that according to archaeological research may have consisted of a system of pools and streams in north-western India and eastern Pakistan. In Tibet she is a popular Buddhist goddess; she is invoked as a meditational deity by great scholars such as Ngawang Kalden Gyatsho, who composed an extensive collection of writings. She is depicted here in the first page of the manuscript illumination. Below her is the image of the author of the text, who had also curated the print edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon at Shekar in 1732 (he is therefore depicted surrounded by books). This goddess associated with music is said to facilitate the learning of languages and the acquisition and the production of knowledge. She is often invoked by students before exams.

18When iconic instruments such as the Tibetan horns (dung chen) → Fig. 11 summon people for religious festivals or are used in rituals, they do so against the background of a sound-rich landscape. Music as Buddhist offering and/or meditational supports created through the use of a wide range of instruments of multifarious origin resonates with the natural environment and the spiritual presences that inhabit it.